Stay Informed

C3

Last year we noted that Gary Cass and his Christian Anti-Defamation Commission were seeking to raise $30,000 in order to fund a campaign against Federal Judge, Michael Ponsor who refused to dismiss the lawsuit against anti-gay Scott Lively over his role in allegedly fomenting anti-gay persecution in Uganda.

Cass promised that his organization would release "incriminating evidence" against Ponsor and now he has begun doing so. As fare as we can tell, CADC's "case" against Ponsor seems to consist of the fact that one of the lawyers involved in this case once clerked for him and Ponsor once made a donation to some umbrella organization that donated to one of the groups involved.

Oh, and Ponsor has gay family members and once spent a year in Kenya:

- Judge Michael Ponsor has been a known proponent of the radical homosexual agenda since early 90’s, before it was a large movement in American politics. After being appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, during his judicial ceremony, Ponsor told the assembled crowd, "We have a proud, vibrant gay and lesbian community" in Western Massachusetts.

- Ponsor has multiple homosexual family members, including his daughter and his former second wife and mother of his two children. During Ponsor’s first marriage, his wife was largely immersed in the pro-lesbian feminist groups.

- Ponsor has direct relations with the country of Uganda, were the plaintiff’s organization (SMUG) is from. Ponsor spent a year in Kenya (Uganda's neighbor) as a young man. He speaks the Ugandian language, Swahili, and seems to be more invested in the Ugandan people then in the American citizens he is supposed to serve. During the hearing, Ponsor addressed the courtroom, saying "I'm pleased to adjudicate issues that affect the people of Uganda," and added that that it was "good to see the people whose interests are directly affected." Well, maybe he ought to move to Uganda!

- The plaintiff’s local counsel, Luke Ryan, was Ponsor’s law clerk for two years. Ryan is also an energetic supporter of Arise for Social Justice, a group that has actively demonstrated in front of Reverend Scott Lively’s downtown coffee house mission.

- Lastly, the plaintiff ‘s organization received the judge’s indirect donations. Ponsor and his wife have made donations to the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. This foundation has donated money to the plaintiff’s legal organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, for eight consecutive years, starting in 2005 to 2012.

So Cass is doing the only logical thing and calling upon activists to "contact the Judiciary Committee today and urge that Congress reprimand Ponsor for his activist decision and protect the bench from further radical activism."

Back when he served in Congress, Sam Brownback had close ties to a variety of fringe Religious Right activists, even living with prayer warrior Lou Engle for several months at one point.

Since becoming Governor of Kansas, Brownback has continued this practice, declaring statewide Days of Restoration and showing up at prayer rallies that were overflowing with modern day prophets and apostles. And the trend continues, as next month Brownback will speak at an Awakening Freedom Tour in Lenexa, Kansas that is designed to encourage right-wing Christians to get involved in the culture wars and "cause a revolution" by mobilizing "freedom fighters" who will "take this country back":

A Kansas-based ministry is hosting a series of events across the state focused on equipping Christian to get involved in a cultural battle.

Entitled the Awakening Freedom Tour, the first gathering will be held on Saturday, February 8, at Lenexa Baptist Church.

Donna Lippoldt, founder and director of Culture Shield Network – which is hosting the event – says the focus is to address the moral decline in the U.S. and confront the effort to remove God from the public dialogue.

Lippoldt, Donna“We need revival, we need a Great Awakening, but it is time to cause a revolution,” she says. “We need to get some freedom fighters up and going to take this country back.”

The inaugural event will feature speakers such as Neil Mammen, Governor Sam Brownback and Donna Lippoldt.

Citing a recent column by Fox News' quack psychologist Keith Ablow, Bryan Fischer dedicated a segment of his radio program today to declaring that transgender people do not really exist because transgenderism is simply a lie of Satan that can be defeated through consistent prayer.

Fischer, of course, made this very claim in attempting to prove that his anti-transgender bigotry is rooted in science.

"Who are the people operating in the realm of science?" Fischer asked. "Well, it's us because we know you're either male or female by DNA assigned to them at the moment of conception by a creator God who doesn't make those kind of mistakes."

Fischer went on to assert that "there is something wrong" with the thinking of every transgender person caused by the fact that they have listened to lies implanted in their minds by Satan. As such, the solution is simply to reject such lies in the name of Jesus and, in time, "they will be free of their gender confusion."

"If we embrace the truth that we find in the Scriptures," Fischer concluded, "that you are either male or female, DNA does lie, anatomy doesn't life, and you take authority over any lie that comes into your mind, then you eventually will be thinking straight about your sexual identity. So we're the ones that are operating in the realm of science here":

In our continuing efforts to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and related cases and restore Government Of, By, and For the people, PFAW Foundation is helping coordinate the Students United For Democracy coalition – a group of student activists and good government groups working to raise awareness of our country’s money in politics problem and pass resolutions on college campuses calling for a constitutional amendment.

For far too long, students have been pushed to the margins of our political system. From rising education costs to uncertain environmental and economic futures, it is clear that government often fails to act in the interest of students and young people. As explained in PFAW Foundation’s report, “Students and the Movement to Amend the Constitution,” each of these issues is intricately connected to the role that big money plays in our political system. Rather than protecting the interests of all, public officials often look out for the interests of those who pay for their campaigns, and students – who are taking on record levels of student debt –students simply could not afford to “pay to play” even if they wanted to.

Yet the country and its young people are waking up. Sixteen states and 500 cities and towns have already passed resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and related cases. In 2014, student governments will be adding their voices to this nationwide call.

E.W. Jackson, the failed Republican candidate for lieutenant governor in Virginia last year, appeared on the AFA's "Today's Issues" program recently where he complained that the mainstream media misrepresented his past statements and record in order to portray him as a "nutcase."

Jackson said that he was "very hurt" by the supposedly unfair attacks on him "because when people say things about you that aren't true and they skew things that you said and try to turn you into a nutcase and make you seem like you're really completely outside of the mainstream of American thinking, you know that's not fun":

During yesterday's morning meeting, Glenn Beck told his staff that he wasn't sure that President Obama or perhaps a future President Chris Christie would oppose government-orchestrated false flag attacks on the United States if such attacks served their political purposes.

Citing Operation Northwoods, a proposed series of false flag attacks against the United States designed to provide justification for military action against Cuba back in 1962 that was ultimately rejected by President Kennedy, Beck said that if such a plan was offered to someone like Barack Obama or Chris Christie today, they would endorse it.

Shortly before issuing his warning that, in the future, Christians will be hunted down and oppressed by gay activists, Glenn Beck explained, as only he can, that Obamacare is a religion and therefore a violation of the separation of church and state.

As Beck sees it, mandating that citizens purchase health insurance is essentially requiring "tithing to their church; the church of man, the church of Washington, DC."

"They are making you pay tithing," Beck said, "and bow down to that God and if not, you are an illegal citizens. That is what they were talking about with the separation of church and state. You are not forced into any man's belief. That's the difference. And here we have a group of people, these fascists - let's start calling these progressives what they are: they are fascists":

Glenn Beck had a truly amazing segment on his radio broadcast today in which he played a fifty five year old audio clip of some district attorney in Florida sternly warning an audience of young people not to engage in homosexuality because they would be found out and arrested.

After playing the clip, Beck asserted that the man featured in the clip was "a monster" and that nobody today would ever dream of saying anything like that.

But then Beck took a step further and warned that if America continues on its current course, sixty five years from now it will be progressives and gay activists who will be delivering statements like this to Christians, vowing to track them down wherever they are and toss them in prison:

Several weeks ago, The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick produced a long report on the 2012 attack on Benghazi that largely debunked many of the right-wing talking points about the tragedy. Among Kirkpatrick's findings was that al Qaeda played no role in the attack, but "Dr. Chaps" Gordon Klingenschmitt is not buying that at all, insisting on today's "Pray In Jesus Name" program that any Muslim who refuses to denounce passages in the Quran calling for infidels to be killed is "part of al Qaeda."

"If you're a follower of this false prophet [Muhammad] who tells you to go and kill other people the way [Osama] bin Laden did," Klingenschmitt said, "you are part of al Qaeda because you're following these extremist verses."

Klingenschmitt then went on to declare that "the spirit of lying" was inside of Kirkpatrick for having written this "false" report which means that, according to the Bible, Kirkpatrick is doomed to Hell.

"So al Qaeda and Mr. Kirkpatrick, you will have eternity together to look forward to":

On his radio show yesterday, Bryan Fischer called for ending Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, as well as the elimination of the minimum wage ... all in order to help the poor and those struggling to make ends meet, of course.

So logically this discussion resulted in Fischer eventually calling for a return to an electoral system in which only people who own property can vote.

"You know, back in the day, in the colonial period," Fischer said, "you had to be a landowner, a property owner to be eligible to vote and I don't think that's a bad idea. And the reason is very simple: if somebody owns property in a community, they're invested in the community. If they're renters, they're going to be up and gone; they could leave the next day ... [P]eople that are not property owners - it's like people that pay no taxes, they have no skin in the game. They don't care about the same things that somebody does who is rooted in the community":

Today a federal judge found Oklahoma’s ban on marriages for same-sex couples to be unconstitutional. While this is great news, same-sex couples are not yet able to marry in the state because the decision is stayed – in other words, on hold – pending appeal.

As victories for marriage equality continue to stack up across the country, it is increasingly clear that the march toward full equality nationwide cannot be halted. Congratulations, Oklahoma!

Frequently, when we grab a clip of some Religious Right figure saying something outrageous that ends of generating some unwanted attention, the person featured in the clip responds by alleging that we took their remarks "out of context" and misrepresented their views (of course, they never actually explain how we supposedly misrepresented their views or what exactly the context was in which they said it that would make it not seem totally crazy.)

Though he accused us of "cyberstalking" him, he also said that our clips are "exactly the same one that I would have picked if it had been up to me" and are helping him get his message out:

When I look at the clips that RightWingWatch has chosen to use from my program, I'll go there, I'll view the clips, I'll see what they have picked to post and in every case so far, they have picked a clip that would be exactly the same one that I would have picked if it had been up to me. So RightWingWatch is simply helping me to get my message out ... I know that RightWingWatch is cyberstalking me, but from my vantage point, there actually helping me get my message out and frequently what I will do, David, is I will send a tweet out to the link of RightWingWatch's coverage of my program because I like the clip that they picked and I will thank them, give them credit, for helping me get my message out.

On the radio program this morning, Glenn Beck and co-hosts Pat Gray and Stu Burguiere were discussing a story on The Blaze about people who are angry that Margaret Thatcher was included in a Microsoft commercial "Celebrating the Heroic Women of 2013."

Gray responded that he was outraged that someone like Thatcher, who is "one of the greatest women of the past century," was featured along side someone like Malala Yousafzai.

Neither Beck nor Burguiere really seemed to have any idea who she was either, as the best that they could come up with was that she was some Pakistani "activist for schools" and that there was some tragedy ... or something.

Gray was not impressed, saying sarcastically "that's a cause we've all been screaming about for how long."

That eventually prompted Burguiere to jokingly mock Gray for being "so stupid" that he didn't know who Malala Yousafzai is as they all laughed and laughed over the idea that it even mattered:

Your browser does not support iframes.

Yousafzai is, of course, the young woman who was shot in the head by the Taliban back in 2012 over her activism on behalf of the rights of women and education and has since become a global icon for human rights.

But why would three grown men holding jobs requiring them spend hours a day talking about politics and international affairs on a national broadcast be expected to know anything at all about something as insignificant as that?

Beck's terror is only growing more acute amid reports that Google is buying up robotics companies because that, coupled with the supposed systematic efforts to remove Christianity from the military, has him convinced that the world is hurtling toward an Attack-of-the-Clones-like nightmare:

On the "Faith and Freedom" radio broadcast scheduled to air tomorrow, Matt Barber and Mat Staver weigh in on the recent controversy surrounding "Duck Dynasty" to declare that the key lesson to be learned is that the "homofascists" are nothing but bullies who cannot and should not be negotiated with ... just like terrorists:

Barber: There's a take-away from all this; it's been a few weeks now, all the dust has settled and everything but left in the rubble of all this, the big losers GLAAD, the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Human Rights Campaign, the so-called secular progressive left in general. People are finally seeing that if you stand up to these bullies, you are dealing with a paper tiger. They have no power that people don't give them. These big corporations and individuals in the entertainment industry and people grant these homofascist bullies - I call them the Gaystapo - they grant them this power that otherwise they would not have. This tyranny of the minority has been taking place for too long now and Americans, when they stand up, when the double down and say 'no, I'm not going to waiver from biblical truth on matters of human sexuality,' it's like okay, what are you going to do now? Nothing. They go away and lick their wounds.

...

Staver: It's the rank and file people of America, the vast majority of people who do not support this homosexual agenda, do not support this homofascism, they en masse respond and A& E and Cracker Barrel had to read the tea leaves and it was pretty easy to do it ...

So [Phil Robertson is] not going to be bullied by anyone and I think the other thing is to not back down. Some people, they get intimated, they don't want to get involved in this fight and yet Phil Robertson stood there on principle, he stood there with love and he became a national hero to many people because he would not budge. If you back down, if you give someone an inch - it's almost like negotiating with terrorists - if you give them an inch, they'll take a mile.

Rick Wiles dedicated his radio program on Friday to detailing for his listeners just how a "deadly cabal of Illuminati, Freemasons, and Communists (masquerading as Progressives) ... have infiltrated the U.S. leadership and brainwashed our children."

As he explained, it started back in 2012 when Satan launched a "D-Day invasion" of America when "witches" like Madonna and Nicki Minaj performed "nationally televised occult rituals" and culminated in the re-election of "America's illegitimate president, foreign agent Barry Soetoro."

Satan launched a D-Day invasion of the United States of America in 2012. When I say "D-Day," I mean "Demon Day invasion." If you think back to the bizarre way 2012 started, you'll see the makings of a full-scale military-style demonic attack on the body of Christ in this nation. Nothing like it has ever happened in the history of this country.

2012 started with witches conducting nationally televised occult rituals to announce the D-Day invasion. I'm referring to the satanic performances of performers such as Nicki Minaj and Madonna on national TV programs in early 2012.

There was also the dark, sinister opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London ... Now 2012 ended with the illegal re-election of America's illegitimate president, foreign agent Barry Soetoro as the highest official in the land even though placed there illegally because he is a foreign agenda.

Barry Soetoro embraced and espoused wickedness and rebellion against the one true god of the universe. And the America people's acceptance of him also meant acceptance of his spiritual rebellion against our holy God.

It has been a roller-coaster few weeks for marriage equality in Utah, where a legal battle over the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples continues and more than a thousand marriages are caught in limbo.

On Friday People For the American Way Foundation Major Gifts Associate Tyler Hatch reacted to the struggle in Utah, and his op-ed was featured by CNN.

Regardless of the ultimate outcome of Kitchen v. Loving (Utah’s marriage equality case currently under review by the 10th Circuit) the issue of marriage equality is once again before the Mormon or LDS church.

I was raised LDS and went to church nearly every Sunday until I was 18. I participated in weekly youth meetings, attended Boy Scout outings, and was a leader within my church. By all accounts I appeared to be the model youth, however inside I was dejected. Severe depression, suicidal thoughts, and extreme self-loathing plagued my adolescent and teen years due to an overwhelming sense of guilt regarding my sexuality.

….Whether it is in the halls of elementary schools, the wedding chapel, or feeling secure and safe in the workplace there is much work to be done. LGBT equality is an issue that will surely grip our generation for years to come. As society becomes more accepting of LGBT individuals I remain optimistic that progress will be made, at least within civil society.

….There are no easy answers for the countless number of LGBT individuals with conservative religious backgrounds and the struggle to find an identity within that intersection is a fight that will continue throughout our lives.

"Dr. Chaps" Gordon Klingenschmitt finally returned to his "Pray In Jesus Name" program today after several weeks away, kicking of the first program with a segment opposing the legalization of marijuana in his home state of Colorado by warning that a demonic spirit of addiction was at work and that people were opening themselves up to possession by using recreational drugs.

"There is a demonic spirit of drunkenness," Klingenschmitt said, "but this drunkenness, this desire for pleasure where we invite these spirits into us ... and why do you think you have hallucinations? These spiritual visions that you have are not just biological; they're actually demonic":

On yesterday's "Faith and Freedom" radio program, Matt Barber and Mat Staver discussed the stay issued by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, temporarily blocking the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate from applying to an order of Catholic nuns known as the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Under the contraception mandate, religious organizations simply have to fill out a form declaring that the organization objects to having to provide contraception to its employees, which then obligates the insurance provider to provide such coverage separately.

But as Barber put it, this is unacceptable because it is no different than forcing a religious group to pay to hire a hit man to murder someone:

Barber: This is illusory, this compromise, this accommodation that the Obama administration and the HHS is calling it. It's a Chicago-style shell game. This is no different, the analogy that came to mind when I first heard about this so-called accommodation to religious organizations, it's like telling someone to go out and shoot somebody, to kill somebody. Because that's what we're talking about here, abortion is homicide, it's the taking of innocent human life. So we're saying you have fun going out and shooting somebody and you say 'no,no, I can't do that, I'm not going to do that.' And they say 'well, what we'll do is we'll set up a straw man; you have to sign on the dotted line so a hit man, on your behalf, can go out and kill somebody.' That's what we're talking about here.

In law, Mat, as you know, just because you hire out the murder doesn't mean that you're not responsible for the crime. It's still first degree murder. This is no different than what the Obama Administration is trying to do.

Staver: Even though you're not the one paying for the murder, but you're the one who sets it up and authorizes it, then you're still part of it.

We are starting to suspect that David Barton either owns a time machine or else he simply has a tendency to exaggerate about the amount of work that he does.

Last year, Barton was the keynote speaker at the Family Leader's "Celebrate The Family" dinner where he delivered his standard presentation, but one thing caught our attention, which was his standard assertion that he speaks to hundreds of groups every year. In this case, Barton said that he personally "spoke to over 600 different groups" in the last year, which averages out to speaking to a group and a half every single day for an entire year.

That seemed a little hard to believe simply on its face. But it becomes even harder to believe in light of his later assertion that he owns a ranch that requires him to work "from sun up to sun down" fourteen hours a day during the summer.

"We wish we had eight hour days like people in the city have," Barton said. "We never get eight hour days; that would be a vacation. We work all the time":

How on earth does Barton manage to speak to more than 600 groups every year while also working all day long on his ranch during the summer?